Marijuana is the cause of
renewed outbreaks of violence in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta State, a leading
drug cop told the Nigerian newspaper the Vanguard last week. In a
December 8 interview with the Vanguard, the Delta State commander of the
National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Aju Okopi-amen said, "the
singular rise in drug addiction could be responsible for the resurgent
ethnic hostilities and youth restiveness in the Niger Delta region."

And the drug in question
is none other than marijuana, he added. "Cannabis alias Indian hemp
is by far the most problematic indigenous drug issue the Delta State Command
has had to contend with," he said. "It produces human suffering of
immense proportion. It has wrecked homes, killed many of our invaluable
youths through mental illness, and caused youth restiveness that is not
easily curable."

Wow, that must be some pot
they're growing! And growing it they are, according to Okopi-amen,
who said the state ranked among Nigeria's top three marijuana producers.
His men had seized almost 18 tons of Delta weed in the past six months,
he said, as well as "3.3kg of psychotropic substances, 882 pinches of heroin
and 283 pinches of cocaine." And the marijuana growing thwarts the
country's development, he added. "The people dissipate their energy
on the cultivation of this terrible plant that could have been redirected
to growing economic crops through which the nation's dependence on oil,
as foreign exchange would be changed."

[Editor's Note: Nigerian
marijuana is an "economic crop" in the truest sense. It is grown
for domestic consumption and exported, mainly to Western Europe, and is
increasingly substituted for licit crops precisely because it is more profitable,
according to the International Narcotics Control Board's latest annual
report.]

It would be extremely convenient
for the Nigerian government if marijuana were at the root of its social
problems in the Delta. But teenage Ijaw tribesmen, who have launched
an armed rebellion in the region against ethnic rivals, Nigerian security
forces, and international oil companies since March, have not mentioned
marijuana as either a grievance or a precipitant of violence. Instead,
they accuse the oil companies and the Nigerian government of pumping oil
riches from their land and giving them nothing in return but polluted landscapes.

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